The research is designed to provide substantiation (i.e. cross-validation) of the ability of a recently developed, client-administered instrument, the Child Abuse Potential Inventory, to differentiate active child abusers from nonabusers. The research will also investigate the INventory's ability to predict child abuse in "at risk" parents. The project will generate information on the internal consistency and temporal stability of the Inventory. Factors which are descriptive of subjects who abuse and of those who neglect will be generated, and normative data will be obtained. Finally, possible uses/misuses of the Inventory as a screening device will be investigated. Abusive, neglectful, and "at risk" subjects will be obtained from a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma and from departments of social service across the state of North Carolina. A concurrent validity study will investigate the ability of the Inventory to differentiate abusers from matched nonabusers. The matching variables will be: location of residence, gender, age, ethnic background, education, marital status, number of children, age of children, and gender of children. A predictive validity study will use subjects identified as "at risk" by an existing procedure and obtain Inventory scores on the same subjects for comparison purposes. The "at risk" subjects will be followed across time to correlate Inventory scores with subsequent actual abuse. A reliability study will determine split-half, KR-20, and test-retest reliabilities. A neglect study will compare factors that are descriptive of neglect with those that are descriptive of abuse. A normative study will obtain data for standardization purpose from a large sample of controls. Finally, based on data from research using a case study method, the uses and misuses of the Inventory by service workers will be described and limitations on the use of the Inventory will be recommended.